Here's Why I Hate Media Matters

I think I've got a pretty good reason to hold a grudge

May 24, 2024

On the evening of February 3, 2010, I was struck by a State Department SUV while legally crossing a street in Washington, DC.

Less than 48 hours later, Media Matters for America published a hit piece calling me a liar.

(I’ve written about the accident in the past, so if you already know what happened, feel free to scroll down to the next section. This is for the newbies.)

After I was struck by the SUV — which had made an illegal left turn, slammed right into me, and spun me around in the air — I landed and skidded on my face. My glasses flew off, which turned out to be the least of my worries.

I rolled over and instantly knew there was something very wrong with my left knee. I lay on my back in the middle of the street, unable to move. All I could do was scream.

I heard voices all around me:

“Stop! There’s a guy in the street!”

“Shit!”

“What happened?”

General chaos like that. I was too busy writhing in anguish to really follow the conversation, but the next thing I knew, I was looking up at a circle of faces.

One kind lady, whose name I do not know, picked up my broken glasses and put them in my coat pocket and took my hand and patted it.

At that point, I was glad for any help I could get.

If anything about the worst day of my entire life can be said to be lucky, it was the fact that this happened on the corner of 22nd and M, just down the street from a fire station. An ambulance was there within minutes.

And that’s where I learned some information that Media Matters decided to twist around to defame me as I lay in a hospital bed with a shattered, horribly swollen leg.

“I don’t think you probably noticed, but the car that struck you had government plates.”

This was the paramedic speaking to me on the way to the hospital, every bump in the road sending jolts of agony up my leg. (I wouldn’t get any Dilaudid until I was in the ER for a while. It was probably only 30 minutes, but it might as well have been 30 years.)

I don’t remember how I responded to that, but the medic told me that this sort of thing was all too common in DC. And more often than not, it was the fault of the government.

“A vehicle like that, my guess would be, it’s Secret Service.”

As it turns out, he was wrong, but not by much. It was an armored SUV used by the security service of the State Department.

Wrong branch, same government.

But as for that night, what did I do? I tweeted it out, of course.

I also tweeted something about the cops confirming it, which was wrong. I own that factual error, and to this day I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if I was hallucinating from the pain or the painkillers or the exhaustion or what. All of the above, probably.

Should I have been tweeting right then and there? Maybe not. I just didn’t know what was going to happen to me, so I wanted to get it out there while I could.

Can I be forgiven for getting that part wrong? Not if you hate my guts without even knowing me, I guess.

The next day, National Review picked up my tweets and wrote about my accident. It was only a blurb, 150 words or so, but they said I was a “very funny blogger.” So that was nice to read at that moment. Lifted my spirits a bit.

That didn’t last long.

That’s when Eric Boehlert of Media Matters decided to leap to the defense of the federal government against an obscure blogger, flat on his back in a hospital bed, pissing into a catheter and pushing the IV painkiller button every 10 minutes.

I’m not going to link to that stinking shit-pile of a website, but here’s a screenshot of Boehlert’s diatribe against me for getting hit by a car:

“Wow, what a crazy conspiracy theorist. He said it was the Secret Service, but it was actually the State Department. What a nutburger!”

Asshole.

And then this part is just, I mean, perfect:

“Trust me, I’m not trying to pick on a pedestrian who got hit by an SUV and broke his leg…”

I didn’t trust him, and that’s exactly what he was trying to do.

Of course, the reason I didn’t know who hit me was because the driver didn’t identify himself to me at the scene. The only reason I found out, the next day, was because…

Okay, let me back up to the scene of the accident:

I’m sprawled out in the middle of the street, right? I just got clobbered, my knee is completely screwed, and I’m in a state of pure terror. Even just writing about it now, all these years later, my whole body clenches up and my jaw aches.

At one point, a man in the crowd of people around me asked if there was anyone he could call for me. I had just moved to DC a month before, so the only people I really knew were at the office. So I gave him the Daily Caller business card they’d just printed for me the week before.

It turns out that man was a State Department security agent named Mike McGuinn. He was the one driving the car that hit me. But I had no way of knowing that at the time. I was a little distracted right then and there.

So he called the number, spoke to the receptionist, and told her I’d been in an accident and was on my way to the hospital.

Without telling her he had caused the accident.

The next day, when the Caller reported out the story, they got that incoming number from the office switchboard and called it back. Only then did McGuinn identify himself as a federal agent. I don’t know if he admitted to being the driver then, or later.

All of which is to ask you, dear reader:

How in the hell was I supposed to know who hit me?

Telepathy? Crystal ball? Authorial omniscience?

But Media Matters didn’t care about any of that. They just saw me as an enemy, for the crime of accepting a job offer from Tucker Carlson. So they maligned me as I lay in a hospital bed after being crippled for life. They compounded my suffering, because that’s their job.

It’s the sort of thing a fella tends to remember.

All of which is to say I’m glad those MMFA idiots decided to mess with Elon Musk, because he’s suing them and they’re panicking and yesterday they laid off a bunch of people whose only job was to watch Fox News and read conservative media and try to ruin the lives of those who dare to disagree with them.

Or, y’know, libel them after they were just in a horrible accident. For kicks.

I neither like nor trust Elon Musk, but today my hat is off to him. Not since Hulk Hogan took down Gawker have I been so happy.

By the way, 12 years after Boehlert went out of his way to make me his enemy for life, he got hit by a train.

That’s not a metaphor or anything. A literal train hit his literal body.

Splat. He’s dead.

I tried to work up some sympathy at the time, and I’m trying right now, but the karma is just too much. I wrote about it here, if anybody still cares.

So. That’s why I hate Media Matters.

How about you?

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